Introducing the Oscar predictor

Looking for a sure-fire way of predicting the film that will win this year's best picture Oscar? We think we've found it.

The Guardian Unlimited Oscar Predictor (GUOP) works by weighting the relative importance of a range of other awards and using some complicated (i.e. very simple) maths to calculate the most likely winner in any given year.

We've tested it for the past six years. In every instance it correctly predicts which of that year's nominees was most likely to win the best picture Oscar.

For instance, last year, we successfully predicted that The Return of the King would win, although it didn't take much working out. More impressive was the year before, when the GUOP successfully fingered Chicago as the winner, and not The Hours as many pundits believed.

This year, with all but two of our sample of awards declared, the predictor puts The Aviator in unassailable first place on six points. Sideways and Million Dollar Baby are the only other films to get on the leader board. The Aviator can only pick up one more point, so it's not in a position to beat the predictor score of last year's Return of the King, but it is running only one half-point behind.

If you'd like to try the predictor out, you can download it (for free) from the bottom of this page. It comes as a spreadsheet pre-filled with the data for the last six years, including the nominees who didn't win. There's a space for you to test the predictor at the top of each year. Simply type in the name of a film from that year and the predictor will tell you how many predictor points it would have scored.

Of course, it could be that not even the GUOP is entirely infallible. If you think you can improve on our predictor, please let us know. (Many thanks to Angus for the improvements he provided last year).